It’s time for the interactive community to get off its collective butt and do something to help build a more sustainable world, according to Sunday’s keynote speaker.

Valerie Casey called the community to action at her presentation, “Designing a Movement: Integrating Sustainability Through Systems Thinking.”

Casey is the founder and executive director of Designers Accord, an organization of designers and firms that has pledged to consider environmental and cultural sustainability when they make design and business decisions.

Casey called into question the idea that the interactive community doesn’t produce plastic products, industrial waste or reams of printed paper by showing a picture of a child sitting in the middle of an e-waste dump that takes in more than 130,000 junk computers a day.

She also pointed out federal agriculture subsidies that many argue favor junk food over healthy food and burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan that are sickening U.S. service personnel and local nationals.

In other words, we all live in an interconnected system in which actions in one area can affect other parts.

“We must change the purpose of the system,” Casey said, from the collection of wealth to cultural sustainability.

The interactive community is specially positioned to help effect that change, she said.

“I think the last thing the interactive community needs to do is start another [activism program],” she said. “The interactive community should be the connective tissues between these universes.”

Casey said she has faith in the community and its capacity to take constructive action.

“We all exist at the pleasure of a system,” she said. “The interactive community does not have permission to sit on the sidelines. They must take the lead.”